melancholy

The Woody Nightshade

mandy — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Positive reviews litter the internet for Sharron Kraus’ earlier records and got me excited for her new release, The Woody Nightshade. However, the rave reviews made my disappointment with the album all the more palpable.

It took at least three listens on a really good stereo to really be able to appreciate The Woody Nightshade. To make it easy for you, if English folk music that leans on Celtic influences is what you’re into, this might be just the album for you. That said, if you’re looking for something that is instantly catchy with a firm melody or clean harmonies, then you might want to pick up something else.

The lilting dissonant vocals and random strumming that make the songs on The Woody Nightshade blend together into a cohesive work aren't intended to be experimental as much as a contemporary approach to traditional music. Kraus’ voice reminds me of recordings my sixth grade teacher played in class while we were studying the Medieval period. Her voice is simultaneously clear and indecipherable.

While it’s easy to get lost in the web of stringed instruments and to forget that there are words being sung, there’s a lingering melancholy that bubbles just under the simplistic surface of the entire album. Songs like “Evergreen Sisters” are decidedly haunting and the title track is no different; “The Woody Nightshade” is an eerie tune accompanied by vocals so slow and wandering that the lyrics are nearly lost. For Kraus, though, the form closely follows function. The listener doesn’t need to hear the line about the man she watches as “he looks away” to feel that’s what just happened. Her distant voice deftly conveys emotion.

The fifth song on the album, “Once,” is easier to get into for a first-time Kraus listener like myself. She sings simple lines we’ve all heard and thought, but with a relatable, quiet sadness: “Once there was a love, and that came to an end... Once each other’s touch was the thing we lived for.”

The Woody Nightshade is for careful listeners who are looking for sad songs to get lost in.

Written by: Tatiana Ryckman, January 18th 2011

Cold Snap: Bulgaria Stories

mandy — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Cynthia Morrison Phoel

Southern Methodist University Press

There is hardly anything more satisfying to read than well-crafted short stories. Cynthia Morrison Phoel’s debut collection of tales from Bulgaria intertwines the stories of several families living in fictional Old Mountain, many sharing a concrete post-Communist apartment building, neighbors in crumbling plaster houses; and often, surviving similar struggles in their attempts to find love and meaning in life and to escape the poverty they have always known.

In Cold Snap, we meet unhappy couples who argue, then don’t speak because there’s nowhere to go, no way to leave the other person and the tiny space they have carved out together. An underemployed husband spends his summer earnings on a satellite dish; soon, his friends have filled the apartment, pushing out any space for reconciliation with his migraine suffering wife. Their son begins to fail his English class, where his teacher gives lessons on contextual words like heartbreak, forsaken, hanky, and drunk—words that feel funny to learn and nevertheless described abysmal realities and people at whom you should not laugh.

The beauty of these narratives is that they’re told across stories, in nonlinear ways. A young mathematician graduates and faces an uninspiring future. One woman compulsively knits extraordinarily beautiful sweaters, the kind that her friends joke could only be worn on shows like Dallas. Upon completion, she abandons them by the dozen in her cellar. The only woman who has made it out comes home for a visit, but leaves again for Japan before she is ensnared by her old life. The community dentist is busiest in cold months—the only time she is truly swamped—when the townspeople flock to the only place where they can sit in a well-heated room for several hours at a time. In the final story, after which the book is named, every character makes one final appearance as the entire village waits for the central heat to come on in the dead of winter with one powerful yet simple flick of a switch.

Phoel worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bulgaria, and it shows. She writes the way only a cultural insider can, with compassion and humor and insight into the lives of her characters and their unique struggles. Yet her forced distance is the best part of her work. Through her, we peer into the lives of others without ever fully inhabiting them. The balance is perfect.

Reading about the street dog affectionately called “Cucumber” because of his protruding rib cage—who shows up in every one of the book’s stories—I cried so hard one evening that I woke my sleeping partner. For a long time, we were both unable to sleep. Even the less overtly sad of these bleakly charming stories kept me up at night, entranced, and haunted me still weeks later. If only everyone could translate the experiences from their time abroad into such compelling fiction.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, September 25th 2010

The Extra Man

admin — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini

Magnolia Pictures

Based on the Jonathan Ames novel of the same title, The Extra Man is a film about, among other things, the amusing network of personal eccentricities that are produced when people engage with each other in society. The society in this film centers around a small cohort of men who live in the same apartment building: Henry Harrison, a self-proclaimed, unapologetic gentleman of yesteryear, who lives off escorting older New York City high society ladies; Louis Ives, a seemingly downtrodden young “gentleman” with a penchant for sexual deviancy (paying sex workers for spankings, cross-dressing) who rents a room from Mr. Henry Harrison and comes to admire the older man greatly; and Gershon, a falsetto-voiced man who dreams of singing melodies in a cave with his dream woman, but compensates for this dream by reading the dictionary, riding his bicycle, and masturbating ceaselessly.

The narrative follows Paul as he arrives into New York City after abruptly leaving his lecture position at an exclusive Princeton prep school (he was caught trying on a female teacher’s bra). Paul takes residence in the city with Mr. Harrison, played brilliantly by Kevin Kline, whose deft ability to perform deadpan comedy sparkles in this film. Positioned as a seemingly unwilling mentor to Paul, played by a mellow, soft-spoken Paul Dano, Mr. Henry Harrison teaches the young man how to become a gentleman—how to scam one’s ways into the opera; how to pee in the middle of the street via strategic hand maneuvers under one’s raincoat; and how, in particular, to regard women as objectified mediums to provide a gentleman’s grandiose, and somewhat garish, lifestyle.

Throughout the film, Paul seems unsatisfied with his life; he longs to be a writer instead of a lowly salesman, he longs to win the heart of his coworker Mary (Katie Holmes), and he longs to “find himself,” as do so many people who boldly move to a big city in an attempt for self-discovery. But Paul, no matter how often he partakes in his sexual fantasies, remains a depressed creature—his apparent happiness emerges only in those moments of interaction with the quirky Mr. Harrison. The denouement of the film occurs when Mr. Harrison discovers Paul cross-dressed as a woman, and so the two have a twenty-four-hour period of separation, in which the kid bemoans his woe-is-me, depressed existence. Of course, the two reunite after realizing that both enjoy each other’s company.

Kline, Dano, and John C. Reilly as Gershon, all perform wonderfully and make their characters memorable via how adeptly each embodies their respective role. The blending of genres, from British-inspired satire to melancholic realism renders the film baffling—as in, I kept looking at my watch, wondering when the film would come to a conclusion. To be honest, though, I don’t believe this reaction to be a fault of the film, but rather the film’s achievement. My guttural response was an effect of the layer of sadness that permeated the film. In other words, if you empathize with those nineteenth century decadents who ruminated on their melancholia for hours in their dimly-lit gray rooms, then, you’ll greatly enjoy this film. If you feel a Nietzschean aversion to this sort, like I do, then you’ll walk away from the cinema in full appreciation of what the film accomplishes, but feeling “mehhh...”

Written by: Marcie Bianco, July 10th 2010

Half Life

admin — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Roopa Farooki

St. Martin's Press

Love stories aren’t really my thing, but Roopa Farooki’s newest novel, Half Life, shows many shades of love in a way that warms the heart, wets the eye, and expands the mind. The book opens with Aruna Ahmed Jones’ seemingly crazy and impulsive decision to leave her year-old marriage. She does this quite literally by stopping mid-breakfast, throwing on a light jacket, and making her way through the Tube to London’s Heathrow International Airport where she hops the next plane to her hometown of Kuala Lumpur, and back into the arms of lifelong friend and ex-lover Jazz Ahsan. We soon learn that two years ago Aruna left Jazz in a similarly rushed and unexplained exit, and the story progresses by attempting to resolve the characters’ (and reader’s) unanswered questions about her ostensibly hasty retreats.

To go into any depth about the somewhat unsettling plot would be to reveal too much; indeed, I recommend the reader skip even the publisher’s description on the front cover flap and dive headfirst into chapter one. The core of this story revolves around the destructive nature of family secrets and the reparative qualities of truth. Half Life is full of subtle yet astute observations about the personal and social functions of one’s identity as a person of a particular class, gender, nationality, and mental health status—and exemplifies how all are historically and geographically situated. Without being too obtuse or heavy-handed, the story is, ultimately, about finding one’s authentic self while avoiding being a detriment to those one cares for deeply.

Language makes the ordinary extraordinary, and Farooki’s gift is in the ease with which she perfectly captures the complexity of a moment with a casual, pithy description. Literary hat tips are littered throughout with tender references to such masterful figures as the Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore, British poet Wilfred Owen, and Jacobean dramatist John Ford—all of whose influences can be readily felt while turning the book’s pages. Farooki is obviously a thoughtful writer, and the story is executed with well-planned precision. Half Life is penned in a visceral style similar to that of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies or Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows. Farooki’s witty wordplay constructs a melancholy emotionality that mirrors the interplay between the main characters. The ubiquitous sense of suspense maintains reader’s interest even after the elements of surprise are effortlessly divulged.

Half Life is a substantive beach read that is engaging as it is accessible. But be sure to slather on the sunscreen or find a cozy spot in the shade before cracking the spine. You might just find you’re unable to put this book down once you pick it up.

Cross-posted at VenusZine

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, June 6th 2010

Mathilda Savitch

admin — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Victor Lodato

Picador

Despite years of being told not to, I immediately judged Victor Lodato’s novel Mathilda Savitch by the cover. I opened it expecting to speed through a mature version of Harriet the Spy with a twist of Tim Burton’s eccentricity. The title suggested a fantastic world not unlike Coraline; however, the fantasy of Mathilda Savitch is of the saddest shade.

Young Mathilda Savitch is a teenager who introduces herself in the first line of the book by saying, “I want to be awful.” Disoriented by the sudden death of her older sister Helene, Mathilda descends into an internal world of obsessive compulsive habits, nightmares, and delusion. Her home reflects her dark imagination, as her mother has succumbed to depression and alcoholism while her father weakly tries to maintain the family’s previous levity.

Mathilda Savitch is bitterly funny at times, reminiscent of The Catcher in the Rye or The Bell Jar. While it’s supposed to be a coming-of-age story—addressing menstruation, sexual experimentation, as well as basic rebellion—it feels more like a moment fixed in time.

While there are wonderful moments in the book, it isn’t flawless. A parallel theme of terrorism felt superficial and gratuitous. I also wasn’t completely convinced by Mathilda’s voice, especially when it came to puberty and sexuality. As a woman, I did not sense authenticity in these moments as I did when she was frustrated with her parents or missing her sister. Her thoughts, which compose the majority of the book, often sound more like staged monologues.

In fact, Lodato is a playwright and a poet, and this is his debut novel. Bits of the text read like poetry—“Window eyes, a window nose, and a door for a mouth”—while other parts sound like a play. Overall, however, Lodato has captured a painful stream of consciousness. I could imagine myself as a sometimes unhappy teenager wanting to find a dark place, alone, to obsess over Mathilda Savitch like a secret friend. This is a book worth reading, and although a fast read, it is not best suited for the beach.

Written by: Claire Burrows, April 16th 2010

Jessie Murphy in the Woods

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 01:00:00 +0000

By Jessie Murphy in the Woods

Rex Records

While some might not be into the cutesy, fairytale-like sound and lyrics of the New York City pop-folk group Jessie Murphy in the Woods, there is no denying the magical harmony produced by the three talented women. These five tracks, a demo of their debut album Eight Belles, are a collaboration project lead by singer-songwriter Jessie Murphy (vocals and guitar) and featuring her friends Marcia Webb (vocals, Wurlitzer, flute and pan pipes) and Amy Stratton (horn, flute, percussion and organ). The trio of women, all music teachers in New York City, met at Columbia University in 2008 while pursuing a Master's degree in Music. Since then they have toured both North America and the United Kingdom.

Noted for their anti-folk style, the group tries to avoid the constraints of stereotypical, over-commercialized music with their unique instrumental and vocal sounds. With a sound less pop than similar artists, such as Au Revoir Simone and Feist, the album is a beautiful mixing of clear vocals, bells, pretty harmonies, and poetically melancholic lyrics. This combination creates an ethereal, magical, and at times, haunting quality that resonates throughout the album.

The five tracks on the album have lyrics about life, horses and love lost, especially the loss of child-like innocence, a literary theme that many can relate to. While I am more attracted to music with an edgier sound, I can appreciate Jessie Murphy in the Woods' talent. Their smooth, lullaby style makes this music an excellent soundtrack to my cooking with my dear friend and roommate Sylvia, who is a creative fiction writer and lover of fairytales.

Starting off with the sorrowful “New York City Lights,” the album continues with “In the Woods,” which invokes images of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is followed by the simplistic, pure acoustic sound of “God Save Owen Wilson.” Finishing off with their most popular songs “When I am a Horse Again” and “Eight Belles,” a eulogy to a horse that died in the 2008 Kentucky derby, the demo is a beautiful representation of the group’s songwriting and harmonies, and well worth a listen.

Written by: Abigail Chance, November 27th 2009

Love Is Not Pop

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:04:00 +0000

By El Perro del Mar

The Control Group

While listening to the recently released album from Swedish pop artist El Perro del Mar (Sarah Assbring), I quickly realized I was being pulled into a cathartic experience evoked by Assbring's ethereal vocals and repetitive, melancholic lyrics. Starting with the track “Gotta Get Smart” and ending with “A Better Love,” the songs hold true to the healing process of a breakup, especially the desperate hold of a co-dependent first love.

As the title provokes, Love Is Not Pop is not cute; it is pain, loneliness, desperation, heartbreak, losing yourself, finding yourself, and after having wept, hope. For the artist, the album is about “the dream of a pure love in a dirty world.” Unlike many other similar artists with equally melancholic lyrics, Assbring sings her hurt, exposing a vulnerability to her listeners that is at times comforting and uncomfortable because of the intimacy it offers—and, perhaps unknowingly, requests.

“Gotta Get Smart” is undeniably the most important song on the album. It’s about the moment in time when you finally realize you’re done. This decided confidence comes through the somber, repetitive lyrics: “We’ve been together for so long. Don’t wanna break you’re heart. I’m done, I’m done thinking it over...I gotta get smart.”

“Change of Heart” and “L Is For Love” are both dominated by a sense of heaviness: dark chords, ethereal vocals, deep sighs, and a bitter tone. In the first, it is unclear whether the repeated lyrics “he will never stop” is about abuse or simply incompatibility, but the song is about realizing you cannot change the person you love, even though you may have “been dreaming for so long.” The latter is encompassed by feeling defeated “when the hope is gone." The exhausting plea, “Let Me In,” is driven by an unpleasant beat and equally anxious lyrics: “Baby open up the door. I don’t make me have to beg for love. I want to be your fool, if that’s all I’m gonna be.”

“It Is Something (To Have Wept)” is inspired by a G. K. Chesterton poem titled “The Great Minimum,” and at this point, the desperation that dominated the last few tracks is replaced with acceptance and appreciation for the lessons learned. “Better Love” marks the end of the emotional journey and the desire to be content and optimistic “til better love comes.” It is also a conclusion: “This isn’t over til I say when. When. When.” It’s done.

El Perro del Mar is currently touring North America.

Written by: Abigail Chance, November 21st 2009

Musicfest Northwest (9/19/2009)

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:53:00 +0000

Rotture

Portland, Oregon

If you ever hear anyone doubt that women can rock you should tell them to shut up and listen to Team Dresch. One of the most influential bands from the mid-90s riot grrrl and queercore movements, Team Dresch released their first album Personal Best in 1995, stopped playing in 1998, reunited in 2004, and have only played a handful of shows since. So I knew this show in their hometown of Portland, OR was going to be a good one!

Every year The Willamette Week, a local free weekly in Portland, hosts a music festival called Music Fest Northwest (MFNW), and the Team Dresch show was one of the many that happened over five days in various venues across the city. While the spreading out of shows across the town means that one has to really pick and choose what bands they want to see. Some venues are 21+ and some, once they reach capacity, will not let you in even if you have bought the $60 wristband, so it’s not worth leaving one venue you have already made it inside. Big festivals attract bigger names, and since it doesn’t just happen at one big expensive club, getting there early is the only way to ensure you get in.

While big acts are the draw for any music festival (this year featured Modest Mouse, Black Francis, Bad Brains, Girl Talk, and the Get Up Kids), MFNW draws from the rich Portland music scene, of course, with Team Dresch one of the many Portland-based acts. Although I missed the opening band, I arrived during the set of another local band called Lovers. I had not seen them live before and had only heard about them recently, as they just released their fourth album, I Am the West, in April. I was captivated by the melancholy electro-pop and emotive vocals, and it's unfortunate that I only got to hear a few songs. They are definitely a band I am going to check out again.

Next up was Erase Errata, a notorious experimental No Wave band from San Francsico. If Team Dresch weren’t playing and Erase Errata headlined, this show would have been large enough, so the addition of the elusive queercore superstars made the packed, relatively small venue teem with energy. (I also love attending rock shows where women outnumber boys five to one. It is such a great feeling!) Erase Errata riled up the crowd with their political, half-improvised, dance-tastic songs, and by the time Team Dresch hit the stage everyone was significantly buzzed. I was not in the mosh pit, which I kind of regret, but standing back and watching the amazing musicianship and show(wo)manship of Team Dresch was as electrifying and inspiring as when I first heard Personal Best all those years ago. (Had I seen them live then I would have been more likely to stage dive and slam my-sweaty-self against the stage!)

They rocked like the best rock stars; they played their instruments better than most boys I know; and they reminded me how important music, especially female-driven punk rock music, is to feminism. (Okay, I am biased, but there is really something about women expressing anger, playing loud music, and just generally kicking ass in areas they are brought up thinking they can’t that makes me really happy.) But the most inspiring thing of all is that this band that seemed to have reached its peak over ten years ago is still going strong today.

Written by: Jyoti Roy, September 28th 2009

Camera

admin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:15:00 +0000

By Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Matthew B. Smith

Dalkey Archive Press

Human beings are interested in two things. They are interested in the reality and interested in telling about it. – Gertrude Stein

Reality is an olive that rolls away to elude your fork. There are ways of dealing with this. Mashing flat the olive helps. When sitting in the john, consider chess moves by the Hungarian master, Gyula Breyer. Even if you’re a guy, pedicures are nice in the struggle with reality. Pap smears too (women only), but, ladies, the smear should be fresh. Don’t wait before mailing the tender Pap to the lab or the results are useless.

Love, incidentally, is a mournful, flu-like state, but when you are wrapped in each others’ arms at a London intersection, and it’s cold and you’re jumping up and down to stay warm, O!, love can be sweet.

All these things and many more of consuming interest you will learn from this risible, mournful, short novel by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, in which the nameless Parisian narrator falls for Pascale in an offhand, but quietly passionate way. Pascale runs a driving school, tends to be sleepy, and has a young son, Pierre, and a father whose hair is disheveled.

Camera has a plot, if you call learning to drive and buying a tank of propane and not having a dinner in an Indian restaurant, and spending a night thinking a plot. The trajectory of the action is mostly linear and forward, though there is a major flashback. And for about two-thirds of the journey you will chortle, as at this deadpan example, in which the narrator plays a one-armed bandit in a British pub.

The interior cylinder would spin around and come to a dead stop, showing an odd assortment of fruit, from which two eternal mauve prunes, ambivalent and testicle-shaped, recurrently appeared before me as an image of my fate.

Must one have ambivalent testicles to appreciate this drollery? I hope not.

Anyway, after much humour, tendresse, and sensibilité things, as I intimate above, turn Camusian. The narrator misses a train. He is forced to walk at night through an empty landscape. He assumes residence in a phone booth and ponders another world, one like ours, but without wounds and aggression and pain. He thinks about thought itself, which he has done previously, as in this astonishing passage.

A few minutes earlier, on the maritime platform, I had stopped to watch the rain fall in a bright projected beam, in the exact space delineated by the light, enclosed and yet as devoid of material borders as a quavering Rothko outline, and, imagining the rain falling at this place in the world, which, carried by gusts of wind, passed through my mind, moving from the shining cone of light to neighboring darkness without it being possible to determine the tangible limits between the light and shadows, rain seemed to me to represent the course of thought, transfixed for a second in the light and disappearing the very next second to give way to itself.

Doubtless you noticed how this sentence goes on, twisting and turning, picking up speed, slowing down, by means of a sprinkle of commas here and there so you don’t have to be constantly guessing at the punctuation, as you do, say, in Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in Ulysses, for example. Oh boy! you will expostulate. And wow! And yippee! Thank goodness for such sentences in Camera!

And thank goodness, you will add, for quotidian reality and its construction in this novel by means of those sinuous snaking sentences and thirteen-page-long paragraphs. Because, really, aren’t you tired of all the commercially inclined routine sentences and paragraphs that are all the same, whether it’s a John Grisham phantasy or any other airport novel, sentences that never take a chance, never take wing, paragraphs that are mere bites so the book pitches to a common denominator, and ergo make a zillion bucks for author and publisher, as though language were a commodity like pork bellies instead of an adventure? Gertrude Stein sure was. Tired of that kind of writing merde, I mean. She was. She was, and, I can tell you, I am too.

“Make it new,” Ezra Pound said. Maybe he should have said, “Make it novel.” Same thing, with pun intended. J-PT sure does. Of course you can’t have media-induced ADD to read Camera. Good. Separates the sheep from the readers. And Camera has ordinary sentences, too. Take that Cussler and Collins!

Anyway, dear friends, you who love the fresh, new, risky, and funny; the delightful, romantic, witty, and clever; the profound, rueful, hilarious, sad, lovely, plaintive, tongue-in-cheek, and complex; the mischievous and deadpan-as-Buster-Keaton; the socially conscious and anti-authoritarian—all good things—will cherish this delectable feast of a novel novel by the very French writer, Jean-Philippe Toussaint.

And yes, there is a camera.

And Matthew B. Smith’s translation is a blast of a blast.

And pass it on.

Written by: Neil Flowers, June 17th 2009

A Chopping Block

admin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:01:00 +0000

By Pree

Kora Records

The death of Jim Henson was probably one of the single most traumatic events of my childhood. By that time, I was old enough to realize that Kermit was created by Jim Henson, but still young enough to have a certain amount of love for Sesame Street. (Okay, I was ten, which is a bit old for Big Bird, but I was a late bloomer.)

You are probably asking yourself a variety of questions at this point. One of them is probably: “Why the hell are you bringing up this utterly horrible nightmare from your childhood when I was expecting to read a review of Pree’s album A Chopping Block? Do you also like slapping kittens when watching Oprah?” Really, though, stick with me here.

I still watch (and love) all things Jim Henson. But no matter how silly or sweet the show is, I still get this feeling of sadness. I can’t watch Gonzo or his girlfriend Camilla without thinking about Jim Henson. I can’t look at my Kermit doll (yes, I still have a Kermit doll) without wiping a little tear from the corner of my eye. It’s kind of the same feeling with musicians like Joanna Newsom and Regina Spektor—and also bands like Pree.

Their music is really, honestly great, heartfelt, and sort of cute in a quirky way, but there’s something deeper to all of their songs—something that makes you feel a little bit like you are watching a butterfly dying in a jar. Pree talks an awful lot about things like ghosts, and graveyards, and worrying too darn much. Pree has real talent and a creative and original ear behind their songs. While they do sound quite a bit like Newsom or Spektor, they also manage to keep an original voice.

There is absolutely no question that their songs sound like their songs—not like someone else’s. Pree mixes piano, guitar, violin, glockenspiel, melodica, and drums together in a way that is modern, while whispering sweet nothings from folk music of the past. They also manage to keep that sing-songy cuteness, while making you think of ghosts, and graveyards, and worrying too darn much. Like Kermit the Frog, or Big Bird, or Gonzo the Great, it is comforting while being really, incredibly sad at the same time—like hugging the afghan that your dead grandma knitted. Trust me, their music is worth the time, and the Kleenex.

Written by: Emily S. Dunster, June 5th 2009

Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:46:00 +0000

By Bill Callahan

Drag City

I once happened upon a Callahan show at Boston’s MFA with friends who are seasoned fans of the Smog oeuvre. In town to promote Woke on a Whaleheart, my pals were far less surprised than I when a very average looking, middle-aged man took the stage to sing existential songs about meadows, dark skies, anniversaries, and water wells in his unmistakable deep baritone.

On Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, the lo-fi Jandek admirer continues his tradition of half-speaking his otherwise emotional lyrics, backed by lovely orchestral chords. For as unimpressive as that might sound, it is the opposite. No one but Callahan can sound modest and sincere when employing phrases like “jaunty as a bee” or explaining, “I started telling a story without knowing the end.” His contemporaries would sound like awkward poseurs at best. But here, when he says, “I ended up in search of ordinary things,” it’s ol’ Bill just doing what he does best.

Most of the new tracks maintain the form Smog fans have come to know and love, though a few offer surprises. “My Friend” is the kind of song that shows Callahan’s progression as an artist whose preferred instruments used to be misshapen or broken. Showing influences of his experimental past, the song is cohesive, winding, and building on itself through strange chord progressions and lyrics about “sweet desire and soft thoughts.”

“All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast,” on the other hand, is not so much a song as a three-minute experimental drone, and a bit out of place. “Faith/Void,” however, rebalances and ends the album with calm clarity. At nearly ten minutes, it is the perfect track for agnostics or the religiously weary among us, as Callahan simply croons, over and over, “It’s time to put God away.” At no point does it feel repetitive, even if that’s exactly what it is.

Whoever made the term “singer-songwriter” sound derogatory never listened to anything in the Callahan canon. Shame on that unwise critic.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, April 27th 2009

On The Ground

admin — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:09:00 +0000

By Peasant

Paper Garden Records

Damien DeRose, the musician and songwriter behind the Peasant name, could be any hybrid of melancholy and charming—The Shins meets the late Elliott Smith—a consumable sadness that Wes Anderson will no doubt eventually co-opt for a postmodern movie soundtrack. While I know this observation may not be a unique one, Peasant has already reached high-minded and popular audiences on National Public Radio's Second Stage and TV shows like The United States of Tara and Bones. I wouldn't be surprised if DeRose ends up on tour opening for Iron and Wine, or Bon Iver. Folk hipsters love a working class acoustic guitar strummer. Beards are the new black unless you're so cool, you've already moved on.

The first time I listened to this album, I was sobbing by track three. More related to my own circumstances than the melancholy sounds of On The Ground, it is nevertheless certifiable sad bastard indie folk rock. You can decide whether or not this is an endorsement.

Despite my cheerless reaction, the second album from Peasant combines soulful crooning with melodic bursts that I suspect are meant to inspire and hearten sad folk like me, with the songs offering a nod of somber solidarity. On "Exposure," DeRose explains that he's hiding from that exact thing, which makes me think how much I agree as I look for some cozy blankets under which to hide. "Fine Is Fine" finds our peasant wishing for simpler existence—"Can't we just be friends?"—instead of the monotony of discussing life's administrative details. "Those Days," refers to how "hazy" life can be. Is confusion really supposed to be so elegant? At least someone can make it sound that way.

Out on Paper Garden Records, a tiny Nashville label committed to environmental consciousness, the most earth-friendly purchase of this album would be in digital form.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, March 3rd 2009

Elizabeth Willis

admin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:55:00 +0000

By Elizabeth Willis

Little Blackbird Music

In Anne Sexton’s introductory note for her book of poems, Live or Die, she “apologizes for the fact that [these poems] read like a fever chart for a bad case of melancholy. But...the order of their creation might be of interest to some readers.”

Whether or not Elizabeth Willis’ songs on her self-titled album were placed in a similar kind of order, they can definitely be characterized as introspective as they explore their own "case of melancholy." It’s no surprise that Willis thanks Dostoevsky and Beethoven in her liner notes. You can hear their influence in the restless piano and the contours of Willis’ voice, which fall somewhere between Fiona Apple and an indie lo-fi version of Sarah Vaughn.

We are in fever chart territory–traveling with and within the artist. The plaintive "Overture," an instrumental of piano and violin, is moody as a desolate Scottish moor. Yet towards the end of the song, the drums come in. It’s not exactly Paxil, but the percussion is restorative. Willis often plays out this balance between lows and highs throughout the album. Many songs are decidedly contemplative: "One," "Thoughts," and "Don’t Worry." Others have more of an upbeat undertone, such as “4am” with its frenetic piano, and "(In) Love" with Willis’ vocals taking on an exuberant, higher key.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with Scottish moors or contemplation. In fact, it’s the melancholy that gives depth and complexity to the steadfast hope in many of Willis’ lyrics: "It was in your eyes/A little hint of a blue sky." The album explores the connection between personal relationships, nature and self-awareness as Willis sings of loneliness, love, dreams of blackbirds, and walks under a starry sky.

A place for improvement is the overlap of vocals in "4am" and "Stars." I found it distracting to hear Willis singing with herself because it becomes more studio production than song. A few lyrics are obscure and abstract. "You'll be in my thoughts forever" could be any pop song. The honest vulnerability of Willis’ voice should be matched with more fully-developed lyrics.

Although this album is meditative, Willis’ fever chart for melancholy is one that is resolutely determined to not let the sadness get her down: "I’m going to find my way. I’m going to make mistakes. And move on." Elizabeth Willis is a promising artist who will definitely find her way.

Written by: Andrea Dulanto, February 24th 2009

Caught In The Trees

admin — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:28:00 +0000

By Damien Jurado

Secretly Canadian

Damien Jurado is no spring chicken. He’s been making music since the mid-nineties and indie fave record label Sub Pop produced his first four solo albums. His time with Sub Pop proved to be a much more musically experimental one compared to his previous tried and true time as a folky balladeer. Jurado united with Indiana-based Secretly Canadian in 2003 for his album Where Shall You Take Me? and returned to his folk sound, a task that he excels at. Caught In The Trees is absolutely, positively no exception to the rule.

Released on last month, Jurado’s Caught In The Trees has the look and feel of his previous releases, but with a little bit more pep and edge. Lyrically, he’s known for his evocative story-telling abilities, but this album acted as a catharsis of sorts for Jurado. He took an entire year to record Caught In The Trees, longer than any previous album.

Collaboration with his friends and band mates, Eric Fisher and Jenna Conrad, is cited as the explanation for the lengthy creative endeavor. The result is a much heartier sound than before, and Fisher and Conrad’s contributions substantially complement Jurado’s foray into more personal territory. He turned inward this time, rather than weaving the usually poetic, yet melancholic yarns of hypothetical characters. He looks to record-making, identity, and pain as fodder for his deep well of dark reflection. It’s undoubtedly upbeat compared to previous productions, but still carries the deeply gloomy substance that we’ve become so accustomed to in his musical explorations. It’s refreshingly cathartic (even as a listener) to get a glimpse into the psyche of Jurado, and this album is an unmistakably fruitful journey.

Written by: Erin K. Murphy, October 17th 2008

One More Year

admin — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:30:00 +0000

By Sana Krasikov

Spiegel & Grau

Sana Krasikov, in her first published collection, brings a filling and current group of short stories, and in them, creates honest characters whose interactions cannot be forgotten. Dramatic and awful at times, desperate and sparse, the stories move through time as each day does. Eagerly, you turn the page, hoping for the best, but you see it doesn't always happen.

As a graduate of the reknown Iowa Writers' Workshop, Krasikov sounds like Raymond Carver at times: despairing and hopeless with a sliver of brightness that develops through clear storytelling. Capturing fond emotion and likening the everyday uncomfortable human element of strangers, the author leaves no image unseen. Reflecting the roots of Krasikov's life, characters often originate from both the Ukraine and the Soviet Republic of Georgia in recent times and are transplanted to the East Coast of the United States. In developing characters, she juxtaposes and successfully conveys the understanding and assimilation of the Western lifestyle, which proves trying for the immigrants. Necessity for survival exists as uncertainties prevail.

Somber and gray, dirty and stark, stories often involve senses of infidelity and mistrust by confused working souls. In addition, they present a weaving of passionate and determined people holding high expectations of relatives believed to be just as compassionate, but who are confused, real, and imperfect. In "Asal," the main character encounters her husband's mistress and the reader is left to wonder how she can interact with her so sensibly, witnessing the heated conversation of the deteriorating relationship. Often, family members add backstory and a thicker fabric of life to the stories.

The images Krasikov creates demonstrates her eloquent mastering of the craft. As a reader, you feel her images striking deeply, and you need to breathe after each story because you completely witness the heated banter or grevious silence between characters. The author leaves no point unseen and no character untouched. As the reader, you exist among the characters and feel the ambiance conveyed through remarkable definition.

Read this collection and go for a walk. Appreciate the world around you because One More Year definitely becomes a part of you. You take it with you wherever you go.

Written by: Carolyn Espe, October 15th 2008